


Here Be Dragonflies

by AlwaysBoth, Chiomi



Category: Homestuck, Kagerou (Webcomic)
Genre: Body Horror, Crossover, Gen, Multi, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-28
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:53:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysBoth/pseuds/AlwaysBoth, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chiomi/pseuds/Chiomi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Dave Strider, and you're the goddamn hero for once. Grey World seems a little less likely to kill you than LOHAC. Not near as much lava, and you only need to kill a few people to win this game. No problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Can also be found at http://herebedragonflies.tumblr.com

> Be Dave Strider

 

 

 

>Be Dave Strider

 

 

 

>Be Dave Strider

 

 

 

>Be Dave Strider

 

 

 

You are Dave Strider. Current location: a few gear platforms from the Lohacse (totally not running from some angry reptilian stock brokers. Everything's cool). But there's this weird chick impeding your strategic retreat. Talking about yet another world and Gods and Champions. And of course, she needs help.  
  
Godlog:  
  
Tcaolin: You are not my first Champion, Dave Strider. I had one before, one with the potential to draw my enemies from the field without touching a weapon. But he has abducted the soul of my host, the princess who would become God-Queen through me, and now seeks Godhood for himself. My second Champion, in love with my human host, has decided that he wishes to debase her for his own needs rather than assist her to her rightful place. But you, Strider, have been given your chance at Godhood and turned it down, and have no ties to my world, but all the power you will need to do what I need of you. Free the soul of my host, rescue her body, and kill both my former Champions.  
  
  
> Take The Job

 

The crazy bitch kind of looks like a color-inverted Rose. Not really, when you peer through your shades, so it's probably the aura of passive-aggressive self-assurance that the world revolves around her. Like everyone else, she wants DJ McAwesome to save her ass, her and some magic princess. Save the princess, save the world: you can dig that. Everyone's always all falling all over themselves to offer you up princesses on silver platters. Just another hazard of being the best.  
  
Godlog:  
  
Dave: “And I’m supposed to do this out of the goodness of my heart? So I can shoot rainbows of altruistic shit out of my ass and never need air freshener again because it just smells like that much virtue?”  
Tcaolin: “You can be the hero. What happened just over there? You missed your mark. You’ve doomed yourself by your own standards. This way, you can be useful before you die.”  
  
You nod.

 

  
> Be the Champion

 

 

Your self who is saving the princess is obviously not helping John, so even though you plan to finish this in like an hour then mash up a track that will change this new world's music industry forever then get back on task trying to fix the shit you fucked up, you’re already cool with just being another Doomed Dave. When you have enough of you, you'll assemble an army of them like Aradia and get all freaky together.  
  
It's not like you have to pack for the trip, with the time-tables already in your sylladex and like six sick suits,, so you follow the Queen-Goddess-thing back through the rainbow gate.

 

  
>Enter Grey World

 

 

There’s ash blowing against your shades, and the Queen’s dress is flapping in the breeze. The wrong way, though, and the timing is off. “I’m going to need a base, and someone to brief me on our current situation. Preferably someone with enough body to notice when we’re in the middle of a forest fire, though, y’know, that’s no big.”  
  
You’re unflappable. You are unflappable even when you pop into another world and wind up surrounded by death by thermal burns for the second time. At being unflappable, you are simply the best there is.

 

  
> Be Unflappable Somewhere Else

 

You can’t just be somewhere else instead of here. Flashstep only works if you know where you’re going, and being this cool still doesn’t make you fireproof. If Egderp were here, he could clear a path with the Windy Thing, but you’ve left him behind. You bring up Pesterchum on your shades just to verify that John is alive, that everyone is. You don’t talk to them when you know you’re doomed, in case of more paradoxes.  
  
It’s completely blank.

 

  
> Panic

 

No, that’s stupid. Only Rose and Terezi and Eridan and Aradia (still, again) and Nepeta and Sollux were actually dead when you left, and at least one Karkat from some point in one of their timelines was always on. So it’s a problem on your end, not the utter annihilation of everything you care about. There is the possibility that, not being part of massive game-space, you are simply no longer under 4G or wifi coverage. That just means that, when you change this world with your sick beats, you will also introduce them to 4chan.

 

  
> Get Out Of The Damn Fire

 

GodLog  
  
Tcaolin: “Through those trees is a lake. Run quickly and you will not be injured.”  
Dave: *cough*  
Tcaolin: “I will have my guards meet and guide you on the far side of the lake.”  
Tcaolin: “They will be masked, and cannot speak.”  
Tcaolin: “But they will show you to our staging ground, where I can send an envoy to explain.”

 

  
> Jump Into The Lake

 

The water’s cold. It takes precisely thirty-two minutes and sixteen seconds to swim to the far shore, where the fire’s burned down to hot ash. Smells like you imagine Vermont in the fall, but with ground the consistency of Texas asphalt in a heat wave, melting and black and sucking at your shoes. Your pants are dry to the knees in four minutes thirteen seconds as you walk away from the lake. God-thing’s dudes might not be as chill as you about the fiery death thing, so you should probably meet them a little farther into normal temperatures.

 

  
> Meet Dudes

 

So Tcaolin’s dudes are sumo wrestlers with creepy blank masks nailed to their heads. Whatever. You have faced down mountains of plush smuppet rump. If you were to be ruffled by anything - which you totally aren’t - it would be smuppets before sumos. One gestures mutely for you to follow him, using a giant fucking sword for the gesture.  
  
You follow. You don’t need to be told. They take you on a path that seems exclusively made of tree roots to a camp in a clearing between what are trees or branches of the enormous trees you’re walking on. You’re not sure the difference matters. The sky looks dark blue instead of black, so that’s a comforting change from the void above Lohac. There might even be stars up there. At least it’s a step closer to the light-polluted dull orange of Houston, where no one expects you to be able to see stars.  
  
The other dudes are walking as quietly as you are despite their bulk. It’s a bit reassuring that Tcaolin isn’t running a complete crackerjack organization.

 

  
> Make Camp

 

They’ve already made camp, and have some kind of stew they’re dishing up. You sniff it suspiciously, but it doesn’t smell any worse than when Bro decides that nachos need scrambled egg on them to be a complete meal.

 

 

 

 You eat crouched around the fire with them, letting the seconds tick away until her envoy or whatever shows up.  
  
Eventually, you take one of the bedrolls arranged like spokes around the campfire and sleep.

 

  
> Meet the Asshole

 

You’re asleep ten minutes twenty-five seconds when the redhead shows up in your dream, disrupting some sick beat-laying in your dream-bubble.  
  
AssholeLog  
  
Red: Tcaolin says you’re the new Champion in town.  
TG: It happens. The ladies get drawn in by my ill rhymes and make me their hero. I’ve got ladies beggin’ me to take their quests all up and down the block and if I weren’t -  
Red: Shut up.  
Red: I was going to be her Champion, since I’m already half-tied to her last one, but she decided I wasn’t worth the investment. So I get to play tour guide.  
Red: The one you’re looking for, the first one you have to kill, looks like me. Shorter, though, and his cheek’ll be bleeding from the last present I gave him.  
Red: Kill him without touching him directly, or you’ll fuck it all up.  
Red: Got it, kid?  
TG: That you can’t take my precocious and complete superiority? I’m picking up what you’re laying down. Threatened that you’re so much closer to kicking the kinky alien bucket and the eternally-hot God-queen will ditch your sagging rump for a piece of DJ McStridenasty?  
turntechGodhead stopped pestering Red at 11:11pm

 

  
> Wake Up

 

It’s dawn. You know this because there is bright-ass sunshine creeping around the edge of your shades. At least Lohac was dark except for the molten death from below: you could use your shades for computing and looking chill. Now you dial the dimming factor way up. Pesterchum is still dead. No, dead is a bad word. Idling. Loitering just offline like a hobo by the tracks cracking open his can of beans over a trash fire with a side dish of Wild Turkey in a paper bag because the next train won’t be through until morning.

 

  
> Wake Up

 

It’s 5:34am, and you smell blood and fire. You don’t move, in case whatever made your ‘guards’ bleed is still around. You look around without moving your head, eyes safely hidden by your shades. Two are still in camp, sleeping in bedrolls: bedrolls that had been empty when you went to sleep, so these were the night crew. The other five are empty, which might just mean they’re mostly early risers. You’re not good at optimism anymore, so you don’t think so. You stay wrapped up, because you look harmless and sleeping, and wait for what’s going to happen to happen. You’re ready for anything. You’re always ready for anything, because you’re a Strider.  
  
You fetch your broken sword from your strife specibus and hold it flat against your leg under the blankets.  You hear footsteps, but they could theoretically be your guards.

 

 

Except for the part where one of them is stomping. You watch as a scantily clad furry and a spaced-out looking redhead who sort of looks like that asshole come in to camp. The furry’s fist turns black, and she punches right through the head of one of the sleeping guards.  
  
Shit.  
  
And now, from the opposite corner, comes a chick in a dress, pointing a staff at the other sleeping guard, and he now has blood leaking from his ears. He isn’t getting up. The redhead’s the one you’re supposed to kill, but he looks harmless and only a few years older than you. He’s the one with the captive soul, too, but you have no idea how to rescue that. Maybe it’ll just happen naturally with death, corpse fountaining souls like it’s double rainbow day and he’s the goddamn pot of gold.

 

  
>Fear For Your Life

 

You don’t do fear. Try again.

 

  
>Rise Up

 

You sit up real slow, like some kid who hasn’t mastered the flashstep and isn’t hiding a sword in their bed.  
  
“What’s going on?”  
  
The furry swears, all English accent and violent surprise. “Bloody hell, it’s a kid. Kid, what the shit are you doing out here?”  
  
“These guys were just . . . did you kill them?”  
  
“Yeah, you’ll be okay now. We won’t let them hurt you.”  
  
The chick in the dress leans on her staff that looks like it might still be growing trees. “I am not sure it was their intent to hurt him. Dalai and Monster may have found their replacement for Kamang in someone who looks just as harmless as they do.”  
  
“But he’s just a kid, Starless.”  
  
You need to deflect. “Are you the Queen’s Champion?” you ask the space cadet.  
  
He - probably he, despite the hair - just keeps looking at the trees. The furry glances at him and sighs in annoyance. “Aye, kid, he is, most of the time.”

 

  
>Kill The Other Champion

  
“I’ve been sent to find you, then. Well, him.”  
  
The furry shifts to stand protectively between you and the space cadet. “Oh, aye?”  
  
You flashstep around her and press your sword to the space cadet’s neck. “Tell me how to release the princess’ soul.”

 

He turns blank panic-eyes on you and twitches a hand up to touch your arm. He’s short and skinny and mostly hair, so you’re not worried about him trying to shove you away until his hand touches your arm and everything goes white and black and Pesterchum lights up like it’s goddamn Christmas.  
  


The furry is behind you, winding up with her black-glowing fists and she’d punched right through the guard’s head with that fist oh shit.

 

  
>Abscond

 

You flashstep as far away as you can see. Repeat six times.  
  
Pesterchum is showing a bunch of missed messages. This fact is significant. It means that not everyone on your timeline is dead yet. And it means something strange just happened. It means that the space cadet was also a wifi hub or something, since no way in hell was that flash of whatever-it-was a coincidence with your internet coming back up.  
  
You are not happy about this. Unexpected powers usually mean that you are going to die horribly. It took you a long time to know all of Jack’s powers so they weren’t unexpected anymore.  
  
Now you need to find a way to a town to regroup and figure out how you’re going to kill the pitiable space cadet.


	2. Chapter 2

>Be The Pitiable Space Cadet

  
>Be The Other Champion

 

You are Fuuka, and the world is collapsing around you. Kid is separated from you, trapped in the dark, and in amongst the clatter of falling rocks you now hear violent swearing. “Hello? Is anyone there?”  
  
“Who the fuck is that? Jegus, where the fuck did this fucking pustule of a nightmare fucking dump us this time?”  
  
A grey, horned shape materializes in the dimness. He looks like a monster, but smaller and more frustrated. You take a firmer grip on the sword anyway, as this place is strange. “Pardon me, are you new here?”  
  
The figure scrubs a hand through messy dark hair. “Depends what kind of festering waste-pit this is. Last thing I fucking knew I was in Captor’s hymnoptera-infested dream-boil. Past-me shouldn’t have been such a shitsponge as to slip up and fall asleep.”  
  
And then he’s gone again.  
  
>Fuuka: Investigate  
  
 You make your way to where he was, climbing carefully over the rocks. He might have fallen further, though you know not where. If it’s through to another zone, you don’t know if following would even be feasible.

  
The rubble of the storage room is undisturbed where he stood. He simply vanished, though you are learning that simple is quite commonly misleading in this place. Next to where he stood, though, is the crumpled body of another humanoid. Grey and horned like the last, but the horns are different and this one bleeds yellow from the head.  
  
>Fuuka: Tend Injured Thing

 

You kneel next to him, twitching your skirt out of the way so you can work. He wears heterochromatic spectacles, now covered in his strange yellow blood. You slip the spectacles free of his ears, and just like that he’s conscious again and fumbling away from you and hissing.  
  
You rear back, almost toppling over, and spread your hands non-threateningly.  
  
“Where the fuck ith thith?”  
  
“I am not certain. I believe you have joined me in what used to be the warehouse zone of my Champion’s mind.” You don’t know if that will be a meaningful explanation for him if he is indeed a new inhabitant, but there exists no better explanation that you know of. You only hope this is a nightmare you’ll wake up from safe in your palace with no Tcaolin breathing down your neck. You hope, but you do not believe.  
  
>Fuuka:  Pacify Him  
  


You aren't sure how to do this. You aren't sure, either, that what remains of this zone won't implode or drop you in Orbiller's snow. If you are very, very lucky you will just be spat out and be back in the real world. You miss your nick.  
  
The young grey thing is clutching at his eyes, panicked. "I can thee. That meanth I'm dead, doethn't it?"  
  
“No! No! Dead things aren’t allowed out of the Morgue!” Kid’s voice is panicked.   
  
You look around wildly, because he was trapped and what have the physics of this place done?  
  
­­>Fuuka: Be Horrified

Oh dear.  
  
“You don’t even look like a thing that was ever supposed to be out anyway!” Kid is as animated as ever. You can see different shades of dimness through the faintly dripping hole through him.  
  
“Did horrorterrorth do that?” asks the grey child.  
  
Kid shouts at him, “No! It’s not important. You should go away now.”  
  
You hear the sound of too many grinding teeth. “How do I get out of here, then, wriggler?”  
  
===>

Kid gestures wildly. “How would I know? I belong here. Kano just brings in all you echos and you make everything bad and you should just get out.”  
  
He pauses, draws breath, and you can see the diaphragm flex and you don’t know what it’s braced against. “I’m sorry, Fuuka, you’re really nice but I want to have a tea party with you where we can have real tea and I can get dressed up for real in the real body. Then you can go back to your dragonfly and be a real princess again with a tiara and everything.”  
  
You feel the helpless need to explain. You liked being a princess, but it was not worth the eventual price. Being here, stuck in the mind of your champion, is the most interesting adventure you’ve ever had. If you’re honest, only the second one ever. It is also probably the most important. The fate of many souls rests on what you do, and you suspect from what you’ve seen in here that it is more souls than you previously knew.


	3. Chapter 3

====> Be The Other Champion  
  
Souls don’t taste the way you’d expected. If there was relative human value, shouldn’t there be a difference in taste between a young innocent kid and a corrupt middle-aged pervert?

They both taste like saltwater taffy. Similar nutritional value, too: you need to eat a whole bunch to feel solidly full. They wear off too fucking fast, too, and Tcaolin's not generous about sharing. 

God-bitch is overrated. She's just like every other worthless bleeder out there except for the flashy toys. You'll play her game, though, because you want a piece.

====> Define Piece  
  
A piece of that ass, always taunting you. Tcaolin would look good in glasses, even if you can’t play with her like you play with the rest. The magic version of the blue pills mean you don’t need to play, strictly speaking, but you do like your games. You want to strip some of that haughtiness from her: she thinks she’s always so in control of everything, even you, and that’s just not right.

A piece of the useless fuckwad's body, because Kano'd had you trapped in there for years. You want revenge on him, which means screaming your existence in his face until he can’t skive off like the pussy he is into denial.

A piece of the fucking pie. You’ve been dead and living a half-life and it’s got to stop.

====> Make It Stop

You slice your way through the walls of his mind and waft out on what you know is a wave of his dizziness, kicking the squishy wet wall as you go. The Mask King’s dead pawns are just so much meat, and you grin viciously that they’re already rotting in the sun, souls food for Kuroyama ages ago, and you’re on your way to immortal, to being better than they ever were.

You are the fucking wind as you flow back to Ir. You don’t have the souls to spare to materialize, and it’s better to be like this, in some ways. When you get to Ir, you flip up some girls’ skirts just to make them flash people around them.

The temple calls, where the faithful continue to pray for relief from war, rescue from Kuroyama and the zombies both, and you drift in like smoke. Pieces of living souls are offered up in tribute, shaped like hope and prayer. You snort them up like nose candy, though they don’t provide near as much of a high. Some, Tcaolin will make you share, but if you take more than she knows there’s nothing she can do about that, is there?

They drift out as the sun starts to set, so there aren’t enough of them to be interesting or delicious. You float out and around again, conserving soul-fuel by remaining insubstantial. It’s easier to watch this way, too, to slip in bedroom windows and down deeply shadowed alleys and watch the fucking scum give in to their animal urges, grunting and sweating and moaning like pigs.

You hate them all, and can’t wait until Tcaolin and Kuroyama take over, a planned ruling diad you’ll be the unexpected addition to when the slaughter’s over. You are the fucking wind, and you will be the victorious champion.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave reminices, while fleeing.

====>Be The Other Champion  
  
====>Be The Other Champion  
  
====>Be The Other Champion  
  
Oh, for fuck’s sake.

====>Be The Less Fucked Up Champion  
  
HTTP Error 404 File not found

====>Okay, fine, be Dave again. Dave: Examine Pesterlogs

Sure, not like you have anything better to do when you’re just marching along, slowly dying of dehydration. Though you’re not sure dehydration’s going to be the only killer: wild animals might get you, you might be struck by lightning, you might run into more people on the space cadet’s side. You have shining new vistas of corpses opening before you.

You open Jade’s message first.  


Of course anything you are doing is super cool. You’re doing it, so it is tautologically cool. And you can never let slip to Rose that you know that word. At least this means Jade was safe when you left, though admittedly she’s pretty hard to damage under most circumstances what with the god tier and even Jack Noir coming running when she shakes the bag of Beggin Strips. You wish you’d fucked up this timeline after she’d hit God Tier this time, because you hate watching her die every time she does it.

====>Speaking of watching everyone die  
  
Murder-mode Gamzee being after you again is almost old at this point. Him and his fucking “mirthful messiahs” can all go hang themselves. Murder-mode Gamzee’s the only one who can get a lot of stuff done, so you keep sending him the stupid links that send him overboard when he’s out of slime. He does serious damage when he’s in his aspect-groove, more than anyone but God-Tier Vriska, and you don’t have access to her anymore.

The state of his caps mean he’s probably just gone over the edge, and it’s not like he can follow you into another world, so next.

====>Equius  
  
It’s probably about the Nepeta thing. It has to be about the Nepeta thing. You don’t want to think about the Nepeta thing.

Next.

====>John  
  
It eases some of the tension in your chest that he wasn’t dead, just bored, at last check. As far as you know, he doesn’t have any limit on how long he can stay up there, so he won’t have to see what’s on the ground and the Nepeta thing can be your own shame.

Hopefully he won’t let boredom lure him down too soon.

He probably won’t.

He trusts you.

Fuck.

Next.

====>Karkat  
  
Striders don’t cry. But if they did, and you had enough water left in your body to spare some for tears, you’d cry over this. It is your fault, your fault that the fantastic glittering living razor blade who thought you tasted like candy and could have taken on the entire world and fucked it over is dead, broken into little pieces and scattered to the wind.

But it’s not all your fault. He was their leader, and he deployed his troops wrong.

You both fucked up, and you’re going to fix it because you’re the motherfucking Knight of Time, but right now it’s raw and painful and you’d rather see all of your deaths all over again - rather feel all of them - than have that picture still in your head.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey, look, it's Rose! Poor Rose.

====>Be the other champion  
  
No. You know what? Fuck this shit. Be someone else.

====> Be Someone Else

He’s going back to when he prototyped Cal, trying to salvage everything. It had to be done, and you know there’s a version of you that will fare much better than you have because of it.

But this you, the only one who matters to you, is stuck out here to die. You are Rose Lalonde, and you are doomed.  


====> Survive At All Costs

This sentiment is overdramatic and indicative of an incomplete understanding of the situation at hand. There is a distinct possibility that you will merely be reabsorbed into the alpha timeline and have no recollection of these events. That is, after all, why your brother recommended a nap: it was an attempt to allow your dream-self access to your experiences from this timeline. You suspect, though, and your suspicions are reinforced by your Seer abilities, that you will remain here until you die.

This is not an imminent threat. You are the sole inhabitant of the meteor upon which you reside, and it is far enough from Skaia that it will not be drawn into the meteor swarm bombarding the battlefield. You have no food or shelter, but you have the grist produced by sixteen of you killing several planets full of monsters and the ability to alchemize, so this is a temporary concern. Isolation on the meteor is in many ways a boon, as you will be able to read without interruption for as long as you like and will have the leisure to pursue otherwise unfeasibly complicated knitting projects without distraction.  
  
You alchemize yourself a house, remembering Kanaya’s description of being able to design hers herself. It resembles nothing so much as a rabbit warren when you are finished, with no fewer than three rooms dedicated to knitting (one for yarn, one for patterns, one for knitting). There is a kitchen-like space, but only for familiarity’s sake, as you are quite certain the alchimeter will prove as capable of producing prepared meals as ingredients, and you have no particular fondness for the culinary arts. Perhaps at some point you will take up Jade’s former hobby of gardening.

====> Sure, Just While Away The Time Until You Fade Into Oblivion

Smartaleckery is not appreciated, though you will heed the suggestion. You take the nap Dave recommended and wake to dark. Which means nothing but that the fires which shone brightly when Dave went back have burned low enough not to luminesce this far. Given the lack of solar orbit and your computer’s apparent unwillingness to acknowledge that this is anything other than April 13th, 2009, you have no time-frame.  
  
Your time-frame seems to have absconded with Dave, and you feel suddenly quite alone. This is unacceptable wallowing, so you commence to busy yourself with knitting. You begin an afghan incorporatinng the symbols you have come to most associate with yourself and Jade and John and Dave, your colors clashing brightly. When, three periods of sleep later, that is complete, you judge it inadequate, and create a pattern for a border of Zodiac symbols. You knit them in the respective colors of the trolls, even the ones you never met. When the afghan is finished, several cycles of sleep and waking later, you use it as your primary source of warmth at night.

You proceed quite naturally from knitting to Westermark, having determined to alternate between various of your hobbies. You consume all of the articles you are able to locate, and find interesting parallels to your relationship with Dave in parts of it. Though, being biologically almost identical, the lack of attraction given your inexposure to each other during early childhood should be more interesting in its absence. The reason for its absence on both sides is yet another point of genetic similarity, though, if emerging research holds true. You feel that your own and your ectobiological sibling’s high Kinsey scores are indicative of Nature playing a non-insubstantial role in preference and contributing substantiating evidence to this research.

This line of thought spawns a short story about identical wizard twins separated at birth who reunite later in life. You find yourself blushing at some of the passages that flow from your pen into one of your journals. After finishing, you find you are quite drained, and sleep again. When you wake, you complete more of your studies of Westermark, but take a slice of time after your second meal to practice the violin. You have not practiced in quite some time.

Practice becomes part of a daily routine, part of the rather haphazard form of your life. Quite soon, you regain the proficiency you had obtained before you entered Sburb. By the time you have finished Freud and Jung and a quite complicated sweater-dress, you are much better, and you are bored.

====> Alleviate Boredom  
  
This is a more urgent proposition than you are willing to admit. When you are not wholly focused, the voices of the horrorterrors from the farthest reaches reach you. They are quite insidious, and you have lost several rows of knitting to the eldritch energies that twist your yarn into strange shapes, forcing you to undo the row and begin again.

You have begun perusing cookbooks from your extensive library for ideas for new meals. The alchimeter ensures perfect preparation every time, which adds a reassuring note to expanding your palate. You are given the assurance that yes, they are supposed to taste like that. Kimchee does not prove to your taste. You develop a fondness for chocolate-covered ants which is spoiled when a tentacled monstrosity whispers that they are much better alive and wriggling, as it is reminiscent of the superlative joy of destroying something sentient in your gaping maw.

You begin alchemizing strictly vegan dishes. Your pile of blankets grows to resemble what Kanaya described as similar to the pile of plush things in which a feelings jam would occur. You no longer write, as you kept slipping into the unclean alphabet of the horrorterrors, which causes the ink to eat through the pages as if it were acid.

Composition for the violin becomes a point of refuge, and you painstakingly record the notes. When you are precise, they can’t distract you from it. You have memorized and studied enough of the masters that your compositions are not horrible. They are not perfect, though, and your mother would be disappointed.

That thought is an opening, and you spend the period until the pills you alchemize knock you out trying not to listen to the sweet enticements of the voices out here. You need an escape. A real one, not the now-inadequate escapism of wizards.

====>So escape, already  
  
It is not quite so simple, and again you are annoyed at this demonstrated lack of comprehension. There are no doors conveniently labeled ‘exit’ in glowing text. You are alone on a rock floating in the middle of space, the last of your species. Very few things provide escape from that. Suicide has occurred to you. When you last trimmed your hair, the idea of plunging the Thorns into your jugular was incredibly tempting. If you had faith, it would be easy.

You have no faith.

Instead you have certainty.

You would float out in the dream-bubbles, re-united but even closer to the voices. It would be as it is when you sleep, now, walling yourself off deliberately because every time even Kanaya comes near you, restraining yourself from dismembering her is nearly beyond your capabilities. If you were there full time, there would be no respite whatsoever.  
So you play your violin, and knit, and read sometimes. You are careful about maintaining your appearance, though aspects of it are changing beyond your control. You are taller now, with a budding approximation of female curves. You are thinner than your mother. You are able to maintain your hair with a spell you find in one of your grimoires. It is the only time you allow the horrorterrors in, and you know it leaves chinks in your armour. You recognize dourly that the need for control actually working to undermine your control is an echo of many other things in your life, but a young lady really must draw the line somewhere. Your eyes are still purple, but look greyer with the sleep deprivation giving you unsightly bags under them.

====> Wait, Grimoires?

Yes, you brought many of your grimoires with you, some of which have proved to hold useful content.

Oh.

Yes.

You see.  
  
You dedicate yourself to searching your grimoires for a spell that will take you from here. Multiple universes have proven themselves fact, so there must be some way for you to find another one and abscond to it. It takes you several months - you have had a built-in bodyclock for a while, now, which is a bit of a mixed blessing - but eventually, you find a spell. Understanding it takes a while, and you fear you are rather dilatory about it. You want very much to not get this wrong. Landing in a universe where you are expected to breathe helium or where you will be instantly put to death for being a witch would not be an upgrade upon your current situation. A dimension without shrimp would also be fairly dire, though you feel it would be largely tenable. Even after you’ve set your parameters, you find yourself going over them just one more time, just tweaking it ever-so-slightly.

Your current location is secure and familiar, and if there’s one thing the game taught you, it’s that things can always get worse.

You wake up thrashing and diaphoretic, the phantom of green blood on your hands, and that’s it, that’s enough, you’re done. You captchalogue those things you want to take with you and survey your home one more time, and there is surprisingly little packing to do. Then you get out your knitting needles - the special ones - and there is a doorway made of light.  



	6. Chapter 6

====>Reach for the light  
No, you are not reaching for the light. You are staying away from the light. The last time you reached for the light you woke up snuggling with another dead Dave and nearly took an elegant grand jete off the handle. Man was not meant to live outdoors. Give you concrete and muggers and thugs with knives any fucking day of the week and you will be king of the sewer-rats in no time. This wilderness shit is awful. You have no idea if you’re even in walking distance to the nearest city. You managed to stretch the bottle of apple juice you had in your inventory over three days, but that was a day ago and every tick of your internal clock reminds you now that you’re going to die of dehydration soon in the most unironic and uncool way conceivable. It’s really tempting to just lie down and curl up and sleep until the misery goes away, but you were raised better than that.  
  
Plus you did that tomorrow and woke up today to your own corpse lying there looking way less hot than usual and goddammit you are fucking sick of finding your own corpse. At least this is some reassurance that you’re heading in the right direction. If this were a direction you shouldn’t be heading, you’d have found your corpse already. You’re pretty much infinitely fucking expendable, and your corpse is way better than Hansel and Gretl’s breadcrumbs because ain’t no fucking bird making off with your whole carcass in like a day. Everyone lost in the goddamn woods should be leaving corpses around to mark their trail.

You may be a little delirious.

====>Keep Walking  
You swear you can see a city skyline to your left. It doesn’t waver like Houston does and mirages are supposed to, so it might actually be a destination. You veer towards it and muster up the energy for a flashstep.  
  
It is a city. You flashstep in, and there’s a fountain, right there. Fuck making sure the water’s clean, you plunk your ass down in the pool with your back to the bottom tier. Your pants soak through quickly, and it feels like you’re rehydrating through your skin. You get out the empty bottle, which you’d kept in case you encountered a stream, and put the mouth of the bottle in the fall of water.

People are looking at you now as if you’re some kind of strange street theatre. You give them nothing as you fill the bottle to the brim and then chug it all down. It hits your stomach like an icy fist to the face when you’re chilling on the beach just relaxing and someone comes out of the goddamn blue and punches you in the face.

You wonder briefly why you’re still in this world and the doomed timeline hasn’t ended itself yet, but that’s a useless thought and obviously it’s because you’re not done your mission.

===>  
  
You sit very still and give Strider deadpan to the passerby as your stomach tries to turn itself inside out. A kid stops in front of the fountain and stares at you. “You’re wet,” he observes.

“Nah,” you tell him, “it’s an optical illusion.”

“Your optical ‘lusion is dripping.”

You allow one corner of your mouth to quirk up.

“Do you want to come to my house? We have towels. And food. You’re skinny.”

“Sure, kid.”

====>Who are you calling a kid, Dave?  
The kid takes you to his home, which turns out to also be a hotel. If you didn’t know better, you’d think someone was looking out for you. The kid shouts, “Mom! Mom! I found a funny boy.”  
  
An older woman emerges from what’s presumably a kitchen by the way she’s wiping flour onto her apron. “Don’t yell inside, honey,” she says absently, glancing you over.

You stay slouched. You don’t need to impress anyone. You are Dave Strider and you give no fucks what anyone thinks.

You are dripping onto her floor. At least it’s relatively clean water and not blood. Rose has indicated that dripping blood all over people’s stuff is maybe not okay. “Yo. Got any rooms?”

“Yes, you poor dear. Honey, get him a towel and meet me in the blue room.”

===>Dave: Follow  
You follow her to a room that’s disappointingly not orange but is at least clean. And there, there by the bed is a pitcher of the sweetest nectar the world has ever seen. “You can stay here. Ain’t like we’ve been busy, since the troubles started, so you can talk to me about earning your keep once you’ve slept and had something to eat.”

You nod. You should probably eat before you sleep, since you haven’t had anything in days, but you want to drink that pitcher and get out of your clothes and sleep in an actual bed with sheets and blankets for the next three days or so.  


The kid pops in with a towel and hands it to you. You dry your hair with it and try to remember what polite thing you say now to make her leave. “Thank you.”

She nods and closes the door, shooing her son in front of her. Excellent. You have won the goddamn platitude lottery. You let the towel fall to the ground as you flashstep to the pitcher, pour some in the provided glass and drain the glass in one massive gulp. You empty the pitcher, then sit abruptly on the bed. You feel sick now, stomach knotting around water that feels like ice with tentacles. Fuck, you’ve probably drunk too much in one go and now you’re gonna puke it all up and waste it all.

The hell you are. You lie down, then realize that’s a bad idea when the water threatens to wash back up to your throat and your wet pants are clinging unpleasantly to your legs. You strip and throw your clothes on the floor and prop yourself half-up against the headboard and there, that’s good, that works. The room isn’t secure, but it’s a damn sight better than the wilds, and it’s not like any lock ever stopped Bro when he wanted to wake you up strifing. And you’re just so damned tired.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All chapters with Kano contain trigger warnings for gore. This should be self-evident, as they have Kano in them, just as chapters which contain Karkat will all contain foul language.

====>Wander the Dream-Bubbles  
You are Kano Jurgen, and your mind has never been a stranger place. Blue-Voice isn’t giving you announcements anymore, so you’re not entirely sure where you are. It looks like a shitty apartment building, cleaner than the last one you lived in but warmer, too. You don’t recognize it, but that’s probably okay because Grey World has been introducing all kinds of new mindscapes to you. The hallway at least doesn’t have tentacles yet. You could really do with a vacation from all the impalings.  


You open one of the doors, and it’s a perfectly normal messy room with a kid not too much younger than you lying there in a red suit, bleeding out just darker than his suit and making patterns like Heyoka’s favourite scarf. You don’t recognize him, and you wonder how he got in. You don’t try to start a conversation. If the dying thing wants to talk to you, it’s probably going to be after he dies, and you’re going to hate it.

====>Leave while you have the chance

You close the door and walk away. There are enough dead people in your life without adding more. You open the next door more cautiously, but the room is empty. You step in, and leave the door open behind you because you’ve seen this horror movie before. Unsurprisingly, it closes with a click. The room doesn’t erupt in zombies and tentacles. You follow the quiet sound of delighted laughter to another door and through to what looks like a tea party.  


Everything smells of almonds, and there’s the dead boy from before, this time with his head bashed in. He’s still talking, despite his jaw hanging half off. The one across from him, her long green sleeves wrapped around the cup, is even worse. She hurts to look at, and you want to stop doing so.

====>Flee

You slip back out into the hallway, which is different now, covered in posters: most are of shitty movies you remember seeing posters for when they were in theatres, but some look newer than that, and you don’t recognize them at all. That means nothing, though. None of it means anything. You probably wouldn’t recognize a lot of stuff even if you’d starred in it.  
  
You open the next door, and there’s that kid again, but this time in a black suit and not bleeding. “Have we met?”

“Not yet. You might have met another me. There are a lot of us. Even more than there are of you, I think. Depends how many times I’ve died recently.”

Oh hell no. 

“Uh, yeah, I’m just gonna, uh, bye.”

====>Abscond

The door that opened into the hallway now opens onto a platform, oppressive heat gusting over you from the dark sky beyond. This looks almost like a real hell, all heat and clockwork and fire beneath you. You’d feel even worse losing time here, because it seems almost a temple to it.  


There’s a boy floating in the magma, burning but unconsumed, and it smells a bit like barbecue. You turn to flee, but your door is gone, dissolved in heat and open space.

Oh. Well. It’s not like you’ve not been stuck haunted by the dead before. At least Heyoka can’t see you as you sit crouched in the middle of the platform, chin on your knees and eyes on the corpse.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Animated gif warning.

>Meet the other champion

You’re in a dream bubble. You’ve been there a while before you notice that you are in your old apartment and remixing Taylor Swift.

Jegus.

What have the horrorterrors been doing to you out here?

You feel fine, as you do every time you come here. The dehydration and near-death don’t transfer, just the additional emaciation from being closer to starving than usual. You take off your headphones and abandon your remix and go on the hunt for other people. Rose might be able to help you figure out what’s going on. Hell, even another you would be someone to bounce ideas off.

>Dave: go find yourself

From the pile of tissues in the waste-paper basket by your turn-tables, you’ve been ‘finding yourself’ a lot lately. You’re just gonna chill here for a bit, spin something, and try to get your murky thought process going again. Vague plans took half-shape while you were walking, but you’re pretty sure that everything that went through your brain after day three was complete fucking nonsense. Yeah, an Air Force made entirely of magical crows helping you kill everyone is not something you can see happening.

>Dave: Come up with a real plan

You need a weapon: obviously you can’t touch the other champion, and the weird powers might be conducted through your sword.

Well, it wouldn’t be awful to hear from people again, Equius aside. You’re pretty sure you never want to hear from him again, or Gamzee’s murderous ass. Talking to Rose, though, maybe even finding a way to meet up with her, that’d be nice. She could hook you up with her freaky grimdark powers from beyond the grave.

But then you wouldn’t be the hero, would you?

You swear, and pace your room. You know that out there beyond your door there are going to be other bubbles, pretty much the frothy flower-scented foam on top of a bubble bath of horrible death. Everyone you need to talk to is out there, if you can get past not wanting to see yourself dead a whole bunch of times.

>Go already

You open the door, and it’s LOHAC again. Awesome. You’ve been to this one before, and broiled-Dave has no attention span. You close your door behind you, because the idea of spillover is disturbing. You spot broiled-Dave out swimming in the magma, still chill despite the heat, and nod to him.

He nods back, and starts a lazy loop towards a different platform.

>Dave: Go to the other platform

When you figure out where the other Dave is headed, your stomach sinks. There’s someone else on the platform, huddled and small and improbably redhaired. Did some other you kill him and you’re now double-useless and doomed?

No, that doesn’t seem right. Usually when you have to go back, you die quickly. Thus why you’re always finding your stupid corpse.

>Dave: Be Bruce Willis

He looks a lot more lucid than he did on the other side, except for the fact that his eyes are glued on broiled-Dave and wide in horror. 

So you flashstep over and deadpan at him, “No, wait, let me guess: you see dead people.”

He doesn’t look up at you, but blinks a moment. “I feel like you’re making a joke at my expense. I’m just not quite sure what it is.”

>Dave: Pity the pitiable space cadet

Even if he’s had an utterly deprived life, this redhead doesn’t look as much like a space cadet as the one on the outside. “So, you’re Tcaolin’s champion?”

Something dark and tight passes over his face, and then he glances at you and his eyes don’t match. “She asked me to be. Didn’t cover the fact that she’s evil in the job description, though, so I’m suing for breach of contract.” He blinks. “You’re not dead.”

“Yes I am. You’re still hallucinating.”

He blinks, then looks back at the dead you swimming towards you. “Oh, okay then.”

>Dave: Stop picking on the poor bastard

Wow, dude’s kind of messed up. “So how’s she evil? You’ve baited your line and it’s just such a tempting worm I’m gonna bite and flop around on your hook for a bit like a mouse with cheese-induced spinal trauma and you can lay on me whether we’re talking Darth Vader evil or Hitler evil. Or Frollo evil, cause dude, not gonna lie, that guy’s just creepy.”

It’d just be perfect if the whole premise of your mission was a lie again. Just fucking perfect, like an elaborate seven-tiered wedding cake with frosting flowers and ribbons and color gradients and happy little middle-American-fairy-tale bride and groom figures on top in formal wear and the bow tie on the tux matches the details of some of the edging and the cake under the icing is light and fluffy and made of shit and rat poison.

>That’s gross, Dave

The redhead twitches his shoulders in what almost looks like a Strider shrug. “She enslaved Tonbo and took her mouth away and apparently eats souls. Turns some poor girl into her meat-puppet every twenty years or something from what Starless said and eats people so she can be a god.”

“Huh. Yeah. That kinda sucks. Thing is, she brought me over here because she says you’re holding the current princess hostage in your brain.”

“Oh, shit, is that where she is?”

You nod slow. “Yeah. You didn’t know? You really are a space cadet, aren’t you?”

Another of those twitchy shrugs. “Can’t keep track of everything. I’d let her out if I could.”

Your dead self pulls himself onto the platform and strolls over. “So, how’re we taking down this particular goddess?”

>Plot

LOG:

Space Cadet: Right now we think the plan is to fight Kuroyama first, since he’s the one with the army of monsters.

deadTurntechGodhead: army of monsters thats practically our specialty

turntechGodhead: she didnt mention any kuroyama

TG: guess shes not goddess of full disclosure

DTG: gosh really

DTG: i thought she was doing you a favor

DTG: sending you out with no intel

DTG: since you took the job

DTG: looked like that was how you wanted it

DTG: not even knowing if you’d get some lube for this clusterfuck

TG: shut up you werent even there

SC: Are you always like this?

TG: alpha dave gets to give orders

DTG: the rest of us just get to duke it out

DTG: and hes just as dead as i am except still walking around

DTG: ignoring the dead like me rerun waiting for him on the dvr like a puppy thats going to piddle on the carpet if you dont come play with it

DTG: whatever

DTG: its chill

DTG: maybe well find out something about how the game works that we can take back

DTG: except oh wait were not in the game anymore

DTG: were off playing zelda while everyone else is still playing murderfuck apocalypse 2: more death for everyone

TG: were saving the princess

TG: its a bona fido side quest

DTG: yeah sorry dude the princess is in another castle

DTG: so how many monsters are we talking here

DTG: like a couple or whoa fuck thats a lot of monsters or shit yourself and run screaming

DTG: because if its shit yourself and run screaming im gonna probably need backup

DTG: just to move the corpses out of the way

DTG: because tripping on corpses is way old-school and not even post-ironic anymore just sad

TG: and tripping on your own corpse has never been cool

DTG: yeah it takes special strider-powers to stay cool when youre tripping over your own dead body like the sobbing fat kid at the obstacle course in summer camp

SC: You don’t ever shut up, do you?

TG: nope

DTG: no

SC: Right.

>Shut up, you two

Log:

TG: so i should probably meet up with you guys again just without the attempted murder

TG: unless you can give me directions from here on where to find the stuff to kill

TG: oh and where to find a non-shitty sword

TG: mine keep breaking

SC: It’s not like they have magic sword vendors on every street-corner. I got mine from a temple-museum-grave thing, and it was the only one there.

DTG: dude you know i have time travel powers right

SC: Oh.

TG: yeah so thats the floating sword right

TG: when did you get it

TG: and can you draw me a map

SC: bettermapthannicks.jpg

SC: It’s the tall, narrow tower. We kind of got attacked when we went to grab it, but he’s on our side now so that’s okay or something. If you take the sword from the future, does that mean I have to eventually return it to the temple?

TG: nah ill just take it from the past

SC: So it won’t be there when I go to get it?

DTG: nah paradox space doesnt work like that

TG: just chill

TG: i know what im doing

TG: i could explain but i dont think you have ten years and a chalk board

DTG: i think a really good explanation needs powerpoint

TG: and a projector

DTG: with those exploding slides

TG: and pie charts

TG: this is how much you are fucked

DTG: this is how much you are totally fucked

DTG: and this is how much you are probably going to spontaneously combust

DTG: so yeah any guards or security or traps that shoot poisoned darts

SC: No, we just walked right in.

TG: right so i guess thats what im doing when i wake up

DTG: so how do i know youre not just another lying faction

SC: I’d just like you to know that you’re the worst conversationalist ever.

SC: I don’t know how you’re supposed to decide to trust me. How does anyone prove any of this shit? Do I tell you to come with me if you want to live so we can make anatomically impossible time-travelling babies to save the world?

TG: ive always wanted to be linda hamilton

TG: but no we leave the freaky procreation to the egderp

TG: just yeah since one of the jobs tcaolin gave me was to kill you doesnt seem youd have that much reason to try to recruit me and not just send me to a fiery death

DTG: actually thats kind of more reason to recruit me

DTG: also with the fiery death not sticking

He gestures wildly, obviously kind of frustrated with the whole thing. Which on one level is the point, so he’ll come clean, but it’s still embarrassing to be seen disagreeing with yourself in public. Or would be, if you could be embarassed. But you’re Dave Strider, and nothing you do is embarrassing because it’s all ironic anyway.

“I don’t know, let’s just agree not to kill each other and figure the rest out later, okay?”

You shrug. “Sounds good to me. Now, fun as this is, I have some projects to check on. I’ll see you back awake, in that one city that sounds like a metasyntactic variable. Try to be the one driving the meat machine next time, okay?”

>Give yourself and the space cadet some time alone

You leave them while you still have the last word, opening the door hidden in thin air and stepping into a different iteration of your bedroom. You know it’s different, because you’re in there already, making out with Tavros on your bed.

You wonder fleetingly if the space cadet would be able to tell how this you died. But that’s unimportant. 

Tavros opens dazed-looking eyes and blinks at you. “D-dave?”

“Yo. Hey, Dave, let’s step into my office.”

You stop all activity and rearrange your pants as you join yourself in the closet.

TG: were doing this

DTG2: were making this happen

DTG2: you come up with the shittiest passphrases

DTG2: along with the worst ideas ever

DTG2: not just the nepeta thing

DTG2: this whole fucking thing

DTG2: i dont do side quests

DTG2: side quests mean new and sideways ways to get completely fucked over

DTG2: side quests are like taking the slutty cheerleader to Roissy

DTG2: whole new horizons of fucking

TG: i deserve to be the hero just for once

TG: ill fix it all when im done

DTG2: in the meantime he could die  
You punch yourself right in the mouth, fast enough that you don’t see it coming. You punch back, right to the kidneys. You fight, and it’s short and hard and nothing gets accomplished but you split the middle knuckles on your right hands (you don’t know why it’s always that one). You think you probably won.

>Dave: Come out of the closet

You shove your way out of the closet and face Tavros, who looks a little worried.

AT: uH, dAVE, wERE YOU… MAKING OUT WITH YOURSELF IN THERE,

DTG2: no dude thats for the cool daves who dont keep fucking shit up in all the wrong ways

AT: iT’S JUST, uH, i’M PRETTY SURE YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN A CALIGINOUS RELATIONSHIP WITH YOURSELF

AT: iT MIGHT BE UNHEALTHY OR SOMETHING,

AT: uH, i THINK IT MIGHT BE WHY KARKAT IS NOT REALLY HAPPY A LOT OF THE TIME, aCTUALLY

TG: its fine

TG: anyway ive got appointments to keep people to see

TG: ollie out  
You open the closet door again, and it takes you to a hallway. The length of it means you’re farther from the central bubble of your little floating sudsy empire. Either that or you’re in a shitty mood. Hard to tell, sometimes.

You have meetings with a few more iterations of yourself. You’re pissed at yourself for coming to Grey World, but there’s shit-all you can do about it until you go let this timeline go and die and a new iteration of you is Prime. Your projects are still rolling, and one of you has been laying some sick tracks.

It’s been a productive evening by the time you wake up again. You even feel kind of alive, though the sloshy feeling has gone away. Now you just really need to pee and feel dry around the edges.

>Wake up, Champion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Source for crow brushes: http://dollieflesh-stock.deviantart.com/art/Crows-Ravens-and-Birds-Brush-Pack-37438167


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a real update! Continuing with archiving. There _may_ be an end to the hiatus in sight, though.

>Wake up, Champion

You are the nick, and you don’t like where your life has been going the past couple weeks. Well, really just the last week. The time you were reunited with your princess was …

Well.

Yeah.

Morning wood is awkward in company, and that train of thought isn’t helpful. Your present company is, a bit: Cho’s been crabby as fuck the past few days. Not hard to understand why, with the other champion as out of it as he is. You can’t bear to call whoever he is Kano, because whoever that is walking around in the body, it’s not the same person.

It’s held you back as you go forth to defend the World Tree - you can’t leave him behind apparently, since Dee says he’s the way you’ll all stop Tcaolin. Dee is, of course, insane.

>But you have a history of listening to insane goddesses

She was right. Silent not-Kano has been a lot more use out here than Kano would be, because not-Kano can keep the dead from you while Starless leisurely incinerates them all. He looks sad, but merely by holding up his hands they can’t advance farther. You and Cho are kind of useless here except for pulling watch duty while the wonder twins sleep. It’s not like either of you are even allowed to give directions anymore: not-Kano has his own direction, and wanders off that way no matter what you try to chivvy him into. Cho’s given up, so you’re all following the madman. Only Starless seems sanguine about it. You want to go back to your princess.

The crazy kid seems to have an unerring instinct for trouble. Every day for the last six, you have found at least one camp of Kuroyama’s, and at least one nest of zombies. Most of the time Kuroyama’s monsters don’t even expect you. Once, you surprised them still all sleeping, and killed them with their own axes.

>So why haven’t you gotten Tcaolin yet?

Not-Kano’s not leading you to enemy leadership, apparently. Last Cho said, you were kind of looping lazily towards Ir. Tcaolin could be there, you guess, but it seems unlikely now that she’s apparently turned everyone there into zombies. Tonbo had taken a thousand souls into herself, but you’d seen nearly that many zombies over the past few days, with no signs of her running out. She has to be getting new souls from somewhere, and that means Ir, and who’d want to stay there when they’d eaten all the souls? They did her bidding without her presence, and decomposing bodies kind of smelled.

You chafe at the wandering, at the aimlessness. You want to win.

>Do you really think you will?

You may be fighting gods, but you have gods on your side, too. Three of them to Tcaolin and Kuroyama’s maybe one-and-a-half. Yeah, you have to do the fighting yourself, but everyone seems to have magical weapons, yourself included. 

You just hope you manage to win before all hope of future is destroyed for good.

>Wake up, Champion.


End file.
